


Seven of Spades: A Kellex Joint

by Bailey41



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 05:09:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4466594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bailey41/pseuds/Bailey41
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kellex, a roadster and the long drive from the Algarve to Brittany and points north. Think of it as a road movie with WAFF and hella fan service.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven of Spades: A Kellex Joint

**Author's Note:**

> [The French national side’s 2-0 shutout of the USWNT in February 8, 2015 figures only in the physical context of this story.]

Part One: Ten Toes Down

The second time Kelley and Alex found themselves in Lorient felt less like a return to a place of loss. Far removed from the din of competition, the city seemed kinder, presenting them a second chance at someone not well met.

Kelley recalled one “free afternoon/tour day” they had the first time. Managed. Not free. She’d chalked it up to the routine demands of the run-up to a match that felt acutely more like a business trip than all the other ones.

The lack of a real, touristic itinerary didn’t help. Much of what passed for one was a fixer with a teeny bullhorn on the team bus calling stuff out along the route to and from training camp. Lord knows he tried. The monumental submarine pens in the old port interested Kelley some. But no one cared to park the bus long enough for her to get a sense of their true scale, which the user photos on the wiki could only suggest. Not that that would have mattered any. The temperature dropped precipitously well before dusk. A technicolor sunset over the Bay of Biscay obtained far better views from the windows of the bus, but the glare reflecting on Kelley's iPhone camera lens made for a lousy picture.

Save for some trash talk at a bowling alley in town the night before the game, little else worked out on the field anyway. For starters, it was cold. Syd had just undergone surgery back home, Ashlyn was in the box for a suspended Hope, Kelley sat the game out again, and Alex was kept in check in by what she conceded was a determined and effective defense by Les Bleues. The team was on the connecting flight to Paris the following day.

The drubbing they received that winter was soon overwhelmed by happier memories. Revenge at the Algarve was immediate, proportional and sweet. There would be no more carping about their transition game in the wake of the World Cup and the Rio Olympics.

But for their part, Alex and Kelley never forgot that very little was guaranteed that year. For a national side so used to getting its way, it seemed that only endurance and sheer athleticism powered them out of a long run of mediocrity. It wasn't artful, but an ethic of improvisation on the pitch more than made up for whatever passed for strategy echelons above their pay-grade, and a handful of their teammates were not at all shy at airing out their misgivings to the press.

—

No matter. That’s all ancient history. An ambitious post-Algarve, three-country drive Kelley had been plotting for months—‘La Girlfriend Getaway’—stalls somewhere between Bilbao and the French border.

And it isn't for the car.

The convertible they rent in Lisbon would never see its top down, not in mid-March, but it's the only automatic in its class available. Kelley’s earnest insistence that neither of them “ride stick” is clearly lost on the girl at the Hertz counter, but it has the intended effect. Palms down, hunched over the frosted glass top of the counter, Alex combusts into a snorting mess, her sides beginning to pulse and ache. She barely stammers a qualification: “I used to...to...to _drive_ stick a long time ago, but not anymore.” That and the look on the agent’s face send Kelley over the edge and on the floor, along with most of what was stuffed inside her Neverfull tote.

The black Audi purrs out of the Hertz lot and Alex makes quick work of the coastal highway north to Galicia. Hugging the road and higher up the ground than a typical roadster, Alex remarks the following morning that the car they got is “a beautiful, efficient machine.”

“Ooh! Kinda like its driver, _hunneh_.” Kelley twangs gratuitously, the extra helping of cheese running over till it becomes something else entirely. They spent the night in Porto but were too sore to do much else but hit the sack after dinner. With an early start the following day, they crossed into Spain mid-morning. But halfway between Santiago de Compostela and La Coruña, the both of them were needing _it_ really bad.

The switch on Kelley’s back had already been on a hair trigger. Alex reacts to the compliment by running her fingers over the downy golden hairs on Kelley’s forearm. When the same fingers touch her cheek, she’s inching to full berserker. The gentle pressure Kelley's fingers habitually exerted on the span between the thumb and forefinger of Alex’s right hand whenever she drove gave way to lightning intrusions into places they should not have been just then. The pads of Kelley’s digits are warm but the band of the ring on her left hand isn't yet and it makes Alex flinch on contact. It takes everything for her to keep her eyes on the road as she vainly tries to stifle a groan.

But car sex in broad daylight is simply out of the question. Making out, sure. Foreplay, maybe. The need for privacy for one thing, but no car would ever allow for the range of motion the pair preferred—Alex especially. Kelley would never forget the first and last time that the suggestion was swatted out of hand. Years ago, in the parking lot of a Whole Foods and a Kung Pao chicken place off Fairfax and Santa Monica Boulevard. And that was well after midnight, in a Suburban with blackened windows. “Kel! We’re _elite_ athletes, for Chrissakes!” The illogic of this argument, coupled with the absurd context in which it was uttered made Kelley bite down hard on her own lip to keep from ruining the moment. Alex nearly drove past a sobriety checkpoint on La Cienega in an epic dash back to their apartment. The things they did to each other that night took radical advantage of fully extended limbs—Alex’s especially. It was light out when they finally collapsed from exhaustion. Kelley was incredibly vocal in thanking her lover for gratification so wisely deferred.

—

An intended drive-by of the stadium at Coruña is peremptorily dropped from Kelley’s printed schedule. Early check-in at the hotel is granted in favor of a junior suite with an obscured view out. Kelley would’ve taken any room at this point if it meant she could be on the other side of _any_ door with Alex. That briefly included the one that came with the elevator.

It could have been a few degrees warmer once they got to the room but it didn't matter. They had hot water. In less time than it took to fiddle with the all-centigrade thermostat, they were liberated from layers of winter-ish clothing and were soon fogging up the sliding splash door in the bathroom. Quite all of a sudden, Kelley found herself pinned against the white marble wall. She wills her strong arms to swiftly regain the initiative, ten toes down, heels up, craning her neck and tilting her head for what must have been their deepest, longest kiss in a week.

Alex slakes her thirst in hungry, airy gulps with the warm flow of water that streamed from the showerhead, into Kelley’s mouth, and her own. She can still taste the strawberry gloss on Kelley’s lower lip and the faint smell of lime-flavored Orbit draws new strength with each labored breath. The musk of Alex’s own need betrays her and they crumple to the floor of the wide tub, side by side as the water pools around them.

Tugging onto Alex’s scalp with her right hand Kelley discretely fishes out the gum she spat out a minute ago. She would've gotten rid of it before they got on the elevator but there was simply no need to mess this up with small shit like that.

In the wicked, parallel vocabulary they've been compiling for the better part of a decade, this kind of overseas coupling is properly an 'away game.' An 'international friendly.' They each flew over four thousand miles, and drove together for another four hundred to get here. 

It had to be perfect.

—

Sex moves from bathroom to bed. Lunch was more of the same, but would be later augmented with a cold bottle of cava, warm bread, and meatballs. Kelley calls it in and it was taking a bit longer for her indecision. _Albóndigas_ —“AL- _bone_ -dig-ass”—the stress clearly not directed to the room service staff. 

A wicked grin at the ready, Alex pops her head out from under the duvet to acknowledge the lewd compliment/suggestion/instruction or whatever it was Kelley said for her benefit. She looks up at a topless girl cradling the cordless handset in the crook formed by her jaw, neck and right shoulder.

Kelley is foreshortened from her viewing angle and Alex stares for maybe half a minute. “You make that look so sexy, baby. So fucking beautiful.”

Kelley puts her hand over the mouthpiece. “What, ordering room service? Ahhh. Everything I do is sexy. Well, I mean not everyth—”

“Get _off_ the phone and get _me_ off. We are in Spain. The food will get here, like, maybe in an hour?”

Kelley hangs up the phone. “Yes ma’am. I do my du- _tay_ for what passes for _your_ boo- _tay_. The polite courtesy of a reach around would be much _obliged_.” She caps her syrupy drawl with a salute. She loves how Alex gets all hot and bothered when she pulls that over-the-top Dixie shit.

“Yaaaasss...”

Kelley pushes her luck and refuses to take the win. “I do my ful- _some,_ for what passes…”

“What the…”

“for _what_ pas- _ses…_ ”

“D-d-don’t you dare! Don’t you _fucking_ go there!”

“For your bos—”

A pillow hits Kelley square in the chest and she pitches backward, arms high.

“You…you ungrateful shit!” Alex scrambles, and digs: “FYI, you haven’t shaved your pits in three days.”

“Oh fuck.” _Oh faaaahk_. Kelley mock clutches at her chest. “You really know how to let a girl down after building her up.”

“Hon, I’m merely getting you back for these shitty, condescending rhymes. _Your_ transition game needs work.”

“Ohhh, bae, did I _hurt_ your feelings back there?” Kelley feigns at remorse.

I'd still lick it though...” It took a beat for that one to really take. Alex offers to clarify: “your peach fuzz.” 

“Wow. Great cross, Morgan! _Joder_.” Hoe-dare. Fuck. 

“Your Spanish accent sucks. Just get your ass back here and suck with an accent.”

“Fuuuuuuuck. I don't know what that means exactly, but you really know what you want, _¡chica!_ ”

Kelley wags her middle finger, rolls her shoulders, arches a perfect eyebrow and persists in the worst Sofia Vergara either of them had ever seen. She twirls, hands on hips, full in the belief that the other person in the room would indulge her for so much more. She throws her hair back, the corners of her mouth racing to her ears. She winks, in the way she does only to Alex.

Kelley’s irises shine golden in this light and Alex is glad the curtains were only half-drawn. Those eyes. The sexiest pair that have ever set on her. She knows that Kelley knows it too, and she holds her gaze.

Alex doesn’t blink. “I _do_ know what I want. I want you.” A beat. “ _Chica.”_

“Oh honey.”

 _Joder_. _Joder mi vida_. Fuck my life. _Ahora_. Now.

Kelley jumps back into bed. Peals of laughter follow a short struggle. Loud. Jerky motions replaced in short order by deliberate, more languid ones that make the sheets twist and writhe. A hand reaches out for the bottle of spring water on the nightstand. They take swigs from under the covers, and a clumsy attempt to replace it has it, the remote control and both their iPhones clattering on the floor.

“Shit.”

“Whatever. Don’t you dare stop.” 

Declarations are growled. Followed by a whole lot of I-love-yous where the “L” is occasionally articulated with a variety of consonants, or cut off altogether, the sound muffled, absorbed by so much glorious flesh. “Mhhmuv you.” “Ruvvv.” “Uvvv.” Nicknames are sung, wailed, trilled, ululated, flat-out screamed. Full names. Last names. Middle names.

 _Middle_ names. Alex would name their first kid Maureen if Kelley’d let her. "That would toughen any little boy up." Patricia has great utility in distinguishing Alexandra from all the women who share her name on travel documents—and apparently when she’s having sex with Kelley. Her mom had but uttered her middle name maybe two dozen times. Kelley’s at six or seven today, and it’s not even evening. What’s five, six years of Kelley yelling Patricia out worth? From _that_ mouth? _Her_ mouth? The mother-fucking world. 

A scramble for more water. “Where’d you put it, Al?”

The longer of the two employs the big toe natural selection did _not_ make opposable into a fulcrum and reaches down from the mattress.

“God, this was so much easier when the caps on these bottles weren’t so damned stubby,” Alex thought aloud, Kelley holding on to her left arm to right her as her leg bent back with the PET bottle. Kelly rewards her with a soft, lingering kiss, only deploying her teeth to to tug on a lower lip the moment she pulls away.

They greedily down the rest of the water and Kelley throws the empty container clear across the room. She draws Alex in from behind and rests her chin on her shoulder, strums her collarbone, luxuriates in the way her magnificent shoulder blades feel on her chest, and leans in to hear her heart. Lips trail up to her nape, followed by the gentle rasp of teeth, and then, a tongue.

Hat trick. 

Game over.

—

Not quite.

Half time.

_Cava. Comida. Minibar. Cerveza. La Estrella Galicia._

_Segundo tiempo. Jugadora._ _Jugadoras._ Second half. Playa. Playas.

Yes. Yeah. Baby. Please. Shit. Fuck. Oh. My. God. Ahhh. Unghhh. Nghhhhh. Any of the dozen in combination. Double-word score. Triple-word score. Geography bonus for _ayyy, mami_ & _mamita_. _Chingada_. Mexican Spanish accepted here.

Equalizer.

Stoppage time.

Draw.

_Minibar. Cerveza. Cruzcampo. Coca Light._

What the Kellex Laws of the Game (K-Log, Kellog, the Book of Kells) variously describes as a 'golden goal' or 'sudden death' is a rare thing indeed, and is never explicitly mandated as an objective. But they do achieve it, as they do the following evening, occasioning the delivery to the room of a bottle of Perrier-Jouët and a box of chocolate cordials. Filled with cherry liqueur and exceptionally runny, the latter came in handy the second half and into extra time.

—

They hadn’t so much as touched each other during the Algarve Cup. Nearly two weeks. To anyone that knew them well (Tobs, Syd) that was an aberration in ways that a twelfth trophy for Old Glory wasn’t. In her sensational stateside retelling, Kelley would refer to those three days and two nights in Coruña as the Spanish Fly.

But the official reason they were not yet in Bordeaux, or even Biarritz, had less to do with overheating libidos in Portugal and the subsequent oversex across the international border as it did with other appetites.

A neo-bistro helmed by an El Bulli alumna in Bilbao gave Alex food poisoning, threatening to put her off molecular gastronomy forever. Kelley insists that it was the undercooked eggs. “Prematurely tempered,” she pronounces with authority. Whatever. She was out for a day and a half.

But a trip like this extracts a silver lining for every low moment. Alex is exceedingly grateful that it happened after the visit to the enormous Guggenheim in town. Kelley had done a fair amount of gallery hopping in New York in the years since she’d been playing in Jersey, and had been hyping the place up the minute they landed in Portugal. “It’s clad in titanium, what they make fighter jets with.” Alex remembers Kelley talking it up on the sidelines at camp, her hands animating to describe its undulating form until she retrieves her iPhone from the locker room.

Kelley oversold some Brooklyn band she’d been obsessing over—“the next TV On The Radio”—but not the museum. They take quite a few action shots along the length of the vast exterior. It's a Tuesday morning, and apart from a few scattered groups of children on school trips, the bare cloakroom confirms they pretty much have the place to themselves.

Proudly wearing one of Alex’s ‘Where’s Waldo’ jerseys from back in the day as one of her layers, Kelley gives as good a tour for someone who hadn’t been there before, zipping hither, thither and yon like an overgrown candy cane stamped with the number 13. A great room overseen by skylights holds them in awe. One of the massive installations in the middle of the space was a womb of curving, rusted steel: _Double Torqued Ellipse,_ Richard Serra, 2003-2004. The selfie Alex took, with Kelley creeping on her from within the sculpture went by Double Dorked Ellipse and #BlueSteel on Insta and Twitter. They talk ART for nearly an hour in one of the cafes overlooking the Nervión River, admiring the view over cups of cortado and Basque pastries. 

They worm their way out of paying the extra €120 for a late check-out, dally a bit at the hotel parking lot (Alex misplaced the validation), stop for gas at a Repsol and would have been on the road again had dinner that evening not intervened so calamitously. 

The bender Alex planned for San Sebastián never happened. Kelley felt not a little guilt for choosing the restaurant and carefully nurses her back to health on a diet of ginger ale, saltines and bowls of edamame from the hotel bar. It isn’t as bad as all that. Once rehydrated, Alex displays extraordinary powers of recovery. All the same, Kelley shut down demands for a cheeseburger and fries the afternoon they packed for Biarritz. 

Kelley took her turn at the wheel while Alex bounded back to 100%. Negotiating the distance from what would have been party central to Cherbourg was to take them two days (eight hours total drive time) with overnight stays at Biarritz and Bordeaux. A mad dash to three wineries had them on the road north to Brittany with time to spare.

—

Part Two: The Golden Hour

The plan originally bypassed Lorient. Siri said that the closest they’d be to it was a place called Vannes where the main road north would merge with the N24 and then to A-84 or whatever it was to Normandy. The sniffles Kelley had in Bordeaux bred a fever, and was exhibiting clear symptoms of the flu by the time they were in a rest stop near Vannes. 

The sun was setting. After a few frantic calls to staff and assistant coaches on the east coast, Alex is patched to the mobile of someone in Paris who suggests they drive northeast to Lorient, where the former minder there rings the Sofitel that accommodated them in 2015. The front desk promptly secures them a large room for a minimum of four nights.

Falling ill in a foreign country was way easier when they were there working. There was a team doctor, and the trainers with them often dispensed the pills. They were now on their own, and while Alex's stomach flu in Spain put her out of action, she mended with bed rest. Kelley required not just rest and rehydration but a regime of over-the-counter medicine. Lorient isn’t Paris and Alex is going to need to speak a little more French. With Kelley in a stupor and safely under thick blankets, she gets directions from the concierge for which drug to buy, and walks briskly down a commercial street.

 _Disponible. Alimentation_. _Antipyretique_. Words that seemed familiar collapse into untidy, alien ones. _Gélule. Rhinite. État grippal_. _États grippaux._

“Oh. That’s what they call it.”

 _Passé composé_ from high school did not exactly come flooding back. It didn’t take at all when French again reared up as a foreign language ‘elective’ in college, but their present circumstances exacted an urgency.

Love does what needs doing. Composing her thoughts under the glowing green cross of a pharmacy three blocks from the hotel, love needs to get what needs getting first. She draws a deep breath, and enters. A girl with striking North African features chirps a cheery “bonjour.” Alex flashes a grin and reciprocates confidently. She mumbles and then half-pantomimes the rest, obtaining a box of decongestant that should also relieve fever. Back in the room, she beams at Kelley, who had just woken up and was squinting to make out her lover’s features.

No bilingual instructions. Alex doesn't need the translation app on her phone and that means something. “A capsule every four hours, not to exceed five in twenty-four, peach.” She’s not counting on her to remember. She’ll have to give her pills at mealtimes. Alex hated seeing her this way, but her maternal instincts quietly relished taking care of her in the way that she was doing now. 

They’d switched to a twin-bedded room at check-in, with double the duvets and a pot of herbal tea on constant call. Calls to family at home, Alex conveying her reassurances to _their_ family in Georgia, texts and tweets to the girls. One is sent to private accounts embedded with a picture of a bedridden Kelley, who appeared to milking it for the very little it was worth.

Kelley just looks suspicious in most of her photos. The truth was that the pills made the patient very drowsy. She barely eats her soup and sleeps for at least fourteen hours that first night and morning. Between helping Kelley up to use the bathroom or assisting her with her meals, Alex has plenty of time to catch up on her emails. She calls Tobin, first to commiserate and then to pray—not in the way that Tobin and Kelley do, but she does in her own way. She hits the gym. She reads several chapters of a novel she’d downloaded. She goes down to the lobby to tip the concierge a twenty for his intercession. He’d already left for the day. and she makes a mental note to find him at breakfast.

Another man at the front desk remembers her from the last time and knew who she was. And her _coéquipier._

Of course, they’d roomed together then too, and she recalls that they were locked out at least once.

“Mademoiselle O'Hara, she is _okay_?”

She manages “ _Il n’est pas bon. Elle a la...grippe,_ ” before she switches back to English.

She is careful and reveals little. But Alex is certain by the end of their not too brief exchange that he has some idea of just how madly in love she is with her patient. Screw her game face; her eyes turn traitor at any mention of Kelley. From her now considerable experience, the best of concierges are creatures of total discretion. If he knew, he certainly wasn't letting on.

She gets herself a beer and sits in the lounge downstairs. Nursing the drink, she thinks about what significance this chapter would hold in their very sincere attempt at forever. For a start, Alex didn’t think either of them would be back at this place, at this hotel so soon. It was a familiar luxury, though one she was careful to note was still at some remove from three-hundred count Egyptian cotton sheets, and a Michelin-rated dinner service that casually whips up yummy things like arctic char crudo in crème fraiche with dandelion tips.

She had grown very fond of those things at the sort of destination hotels her endorsers (or indeed Kelley) would book. Their professional achievement was often, and quite unfairly, measured through other criteria, but she’d ceased to worry about how she and Kelley were fêted by sponsors. They’ve been nothing but grateful, and never really talk about it in great detail beyond it being a lived reality. They’ve taken great pains to not let it disrupt the close family dynamic of the team beyond the occasional hoopla over this or that print ad, an editorial, or a promotional spot. “Marketability” was a necessary euphemism, and she and Kelley made nice with all that a very long time ago. Especially if it afforded them the creature comforts they were enjoying now. It’s a privilege, two precious weeks alone with the person she most wanted to be with, and with what the job actually pays, they’d be lucky to last three days they way they’ve been splurging.

Not that it mattered, really. Both women were long past counting the cost for what they were willing to give to one another.

—

Things were turning around for Kelley by day three. She was up at six and spent the first hour comparing the French New Testament in the drawer of the nightstand with the small Bible she carried with her. There was also a fresh pack of playing cards in there, and she resolved to challenge Alex to some friendly competition after breakfast. She’ll need to get her strength back up for a few more days yet to resume their _other_ shenanigans, but it won’t be for another three weeks before she gets to mess with Alex’s head and run her down on the pitch. 

They settle on a game of Blackjack. Best of eleven, it turns out. Tied at five games apiece, the last round has Alex at 14 before her last turn.

She hits 21 with one card.

“Luck of the draw indeed.” Kelley concedes, immediately regrets the cliché, and with a flourish, blows her a kiss.

Alex stands to pour herself a glass of water, and brings Kelley a heaping cup of chamomile tea. “Your grubby, diseased fingers were all over the deck. It's not like I won’t contract whatever it is you have if you leaned over and kissed me for real, you know.” 

Kelley motions to the gap between the beds, her forearms wading on water that isn’t there. Alex beams, stands over her and bends to smell her unwashed scalp. It’s sharp but not at all unpleasant. Kelley traces lazily at the scars on her knees.

She looks up. “Lex… beauty… thanks for taking such good care of me.”

“Don’t be silly, my love.”

She walks to the bathroom to draw Kelley a warm bath. She sits on the lip of the tub and waits patiently for it to fill.

It wouldn’t be the first time Kelley got her sick, and it won’t be the last. In a perverse way, she loved the very first time someone in the team noisily proclaimed (Pinoe?) that she caught a cold and “whatever else from having frequent and extended carnal relations” with Kelley. It was from nothing of the sort. They drank from the same bottle of Gatorade. They shared the same cocktails at a function. They borrowed each other’s clothes. They’d just started seeing each other then, and she remembered fondly how she took pride in any implication that they were intimate. From anyone. Even if it was to her detriment. Like getting ill.

It was one thing for the two them to formally start using the words girlfriend or lover, but it was another thing entirely for others to affirm their relationship and make its rubric commonplace. Far away from the concessions they’ve had to make to be around the team (but never _to_ the team), there was a comfort to their anonymity in Europe. This trip in particular. Unprompted and taking cues from gestures that could easily be interpreted as platonic, strangers would casually remark how beautiful, how perfectly matched they were. This emboldened them some by the time they got to Lorient, and Kelley more that once observed that they should take this newfound relationship swagger stateside.

Alex likes to think that she’s moderated a little since that infatuated, love-conquers-all phase with Kelley.

But not by much. Alex walks back to the bedroom and sees that Kelley’d passed out. There she was now, lying on her stomach, her back tense from a fitful sleep, the freckles on her shoulders like so many bits of gold leaf, obscuring a reading of the taut skin and muscles beneath. A fit of cold sweat has Kelley down to her bra again and Alex wanted that moment to stand back to take it all in. She made even this look good.

There was no point in letting all that hot water go to waste. Alex gently slips out of her sweats, wraps a wet towel around her head and stays in the tub until her fingers prune.

Her immune system holds out.

—

Alex decides for the both of them to stay in the city for a fifth day. Saturday morning is market day in Lorient, and Kelley had already felt fine Friday morning. By mid-afternoon, they had walked as far as their feet let them. After steak frites and a carafe of burgundy, Kelley calls an Über back to the hotel and they take out the car from the hotel garage. They drive out of the city, beyond a headland that tapers to a low spit addressing the ocean. They park the car along a camping ground dominated by an old German blockhouse.

They hold hands up to where the road ends in a tumble of sea-wrack and disintegrating concrete.

Kelley stands on the lip of the jetty, standing not nine, ten feet from Alex, her dark jeggings and quilted coat cutting a profile that dissolves in the blur of her wind-whipped hair. It’s golden hour and her tresses glow, alternating between a light bronze and shimmering brass. She stares wistfully at the tide coming in and wished right then that she had her board.

“She’s lit from within.” Alex thought that the _minute_ they met, and she’d never felt it as strongly as she did now. Here, in the fading light, a waterfront on the edges of a city they would have never found themselves in had not fate and their not insignificant talents conspired to let them see as much of the world as they did. Alex half wishes she hadn’t left her Leica in the glove compartment, but she wasn’t losing this moment to walk back to the car.

“The sun is setting somewhere over the Atlantic,” Kelley narrates, following its arc with her phone camera, “on its way to Newfoundland or Maine or wherever…”

Alex looks to the brilliant red orb dipping beyond the range of her vision. “Oh word?”

“Shut up.” Kelley turns, quite deliberately, her hair in errant strands going across her face, the grey-green eye shadow making her eyes extra smoky.

The way she is in that light has Alex _almost_ at a loss for words. 

“I'm picturing you naked.”

“Bae, why’d you have to go all weird?” Kelley slinks back into her arms anyway. “You kept the selfies from last night?”

“Oh yeah."

Kelley has that idiot grin the entire ride back to town.

 —


End file.
